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Dessert

Raspberry Caramels

A sweet candy made by cooking sugar, water, glucose, cream, butter, and raspberry flavoring until the crack stage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and cherry work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 192 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raspberry Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan and heat until dissolved.

  2. Stir in the glucose and boil until it reaches the 'ball' stage.

  3. Add the cream and butter in small pieces, stirring continuously until the syrup reaches the 'crack' stage.

  4. Immediately transfer the saucepan to a bowl of cold water to stop further cooking.

  5. Add coloring and flavoring to taste.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture onto an oiled slab or into an oiled tin.

  2. Once cool, cut into small squares using a caramel cutter or a slightly buttered knife.

  3. Wrap each caramel in wax paper.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Raspberry + cherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + raspberrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + raspberrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Provides the main sweetness and forms the body of the caramel as it cooks.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the caramel a soft, chewy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smooth, tender bite.
Glucose
Inhibits sugar crystallization, helping the caramel stay smooth rather than grainy.

The step that matters

Taking the syrup to the 'crack' stage. Stopping too early leaves the caramel soft and sticky, while going too far makes it hard and brittle. Cooling the pan in cold water halts the cooking promptly so the texture stays on target.

Swap the cherry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, cream, raspberry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, raspberry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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